traveler

Yes, that is a problem. Can anyone give us a clear description of the HGA as Crowley defines it? Or, can anyone define the HGA from sources before Crowley? I have read through most of this thread and cannot find a clear definition of the HGA. I have had my say (post #46) but I am basing my definition of the HGA on traditions from all over the place. And trying to fit it into what I have experienced. A very haphazard approach. I will throw out some guesses. Is the HGA a gatekeeper? Is the HGA comparable to Hadit who helps the mystic traveler approach Nuit? Just what is the function of the HGA according to Crowley? My definition is that it leads us inward and, yes, uncovers our strengths or weaknesses. And corrects any imbalances ... over time. I have not studied Crowley's teachings extensively. But, my family used to be quite active in the Gnostic Mass. There is nothing in Crowley's teachings that I disagree with, that I am aware of.

Highly instructive. You are all my teachers. Thank you.

All of the ideas offered here seem like good interpretations. I like them all. If nothing else, this text has gotten us to think and ponder the meaning of life.

That's the gist of the matter. Seeing what is there is a multi-layered adventure.

Symbols are strange things. This forum is full of them. Something creeps up on you and gives you an experience - usually with no explanation, whatsoever. I read here and there hoping that someone else has had the same experience so I can shed some light on what occurred. I only see other people's symbols which could mean just about anything if I twist the text around enough. There really isn't anything to do except listen for promptings from the unknown or just wait it out and see what comes next. That is my rationale. My heart center is the heaviest thing in my body now, with the belly coming in for a close second. I live in a safe universe. There is nothing to fear. Since the logical direction for this shifting center to move is upward, I am contemplating what would be the best way to nudge this along. Diet come to mind. Perhaps a good fast. Have you noticed that the merging of yin and yang repeats itself over and over, like a spiral, not a circle? And the Holy Guardian Angel, what is it really? Where have I seen that face before? and will I see it again? Later: As it turns out, the solution presents itself without effort this evening. To look up. Like a wick this draws the damned energy up into the neither regions restoring balance between the three rooms of my temple-body.

Could the five in the house be referring to the five trees mentioned in verse 19? In this verse (16) we see the unbalanced state of our inner world or five trees, then in verse 19 we see balance and peace as our five trees stop fighting and grow into perfect unity. On the other hand, the coming of Christianity in all its many shades certainly did cause dissension - fire, sword and war - to fill the earth in a real physical sense.

The Royal Secret refers to the Royal Arch of Yorkrite Masonry. Some say that the arch is the corpus callosum, the arch-shaped nerve which connects the right and left brain hemispheres. Masonic tradition says that the ceiling of the Lodge room represents the sky, notably the starry sky of nighttime. This ceiling/sky is the bottom side of the corpus callosum as seen from the center of the brain or septum pellucidum, also called the Cave of Brahma by the Hindus and the Empty Space in the Secret of the Golden Flower. In the Royal Arch ritual work, when the arch is activated the work is finished and the workers lay down their tools and aprons, and celebrate. Jose Arguelles had this to say: Jose further teaches that the Holomind Perceiver located within the corpus callosum (Royal Arch) is a gateway into "galactic consciousness". I will also venture to suggest that the Taoist term Heavenly Gate and the Hindu term Aperture of Brahma refer to this same gateway. The Royal Arch ritual was rejected by the Grand Lodge of England a long time ago but the Irish Masons refused to discard it and thus preserved it. Later, the ritual came to the USA and is part of the Yorkrite Masonry here. Seeing the arch as being inside the head is not mainstream Masonic thought. But, neither am I alone in the assumptions I have made. Also, what I have presented here is an over simplified explanation. Experience is the best teacher. Stand in the center of your head and look up. What do you see? There is no right or wrong answer to that question. What is seen there shifts as you reach deeper and deeper levels of consciousness in meditation.

When Joseph Smith was asked how he kept such good order in his city of Navoo, he said, "I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves."

The only action I have planned is to observe, which is hardly an action.

I pulled that off the web. The interpretation he gave seems reasonable. When do you see your own true image as a spiritual being? Is this what the texts is referring to? Language is a stepping stone to ignorance. It's a shame that the full intent of these words couldn't be included. Maybe the words do come with the intent embedded in it. I recall learning somewhere in my distance Sunday School days that if words are written under the influence of the spirit then you need the spirit to understand them. The tricky part is that every one seems to get their own personal meaning. That said, I still don't have a clue what this verse could be referring to.

Let us say that you are in a room. A light appears and within the light you see a being of light. You feel almost overwhelmed by the loving energy of this being. You feel this being. But you don't know what the being of light is feeling, only what you are feeling. We are all people in a room illuminated by a candle. We know what we feel like but cannot comprehend what the enlightened ones are feeling. Since awakening is a never ending spectrum of evolution, we too are the flame of the candle in our own right, giving warmth and light to those around us. We know what we are feeling as the kundalini runs through us. Those whose snake has not yet risen cannot know what we are feeling, only what they are feeling as they sense the energy in us. Sometimes someone is called upon to be a conduit for healing energy to aid in correcting a "problem" in another. The healed person knows what it is like to be healed but not what it is like to have the snake awakened within, to be a healer. We can come to a place where we share the feelings of others, seeing them as being Us on some deep level. But to feel exactly as the other feels is less likely. For instance, let's assume the sun is an intelligent being, then can we truly feel what the sun is feeling? I cannot. Not fully. For I am not the sun. I can understand the sensation of feeling as one with another human. To feel as one with the sun takes more than I can fathom at the moment. So, we are all in a room with a candle. We feel the flame's warmth. The sensation of being the source of that warmth is a sensation quite outside my experience. When I am the flame, then I know what I feel. But there are many flames and a candle flame cannot feel the same as a bonfire.

Body Electronic folks say to "love the pain". I have used this and it works. The pain vanishes when loved. But, when everything disappears ... there is nothing, no thoughts, no emotions, nothing. And then center jumps up into the heart and the heart aches as if physically held in the death grip of a living snake.

Very rich.

Here's a little bit of a twist to the topic:

Here's a well-known tale that I thought of when reading about stumbling over the chair in a post above: About being awake, let's compare this to a dark room full of people. A candle is lit and illuminates the room. Everyone in the room benefits from the light, but nobody feels like the candle flame. The flame is the one who is awake, the one who is holy; it is an unique experience. Others look on and can't decide what the flame is feeling. They need the holy ones all the same for what would this world be like without light?"

Perhaps the betrayal of Judas was meant to say that he revealed Jesus, as in proclaiming Him. see http://www.rense.com/general71/defmo.htm This website suggests that Barbelo refers to Bar [son of] Belos [baal, Bel Belus]. Mary Sparrowdancer is a fascinating person. She poses quite a few questions in my mind. Here is a link to a free download of her book: http://freedomguide.blogspot.com/2012/06/love-song-by-mary-sparrowdancer.html A few days later: it was a good read.

What we call the Bible is canonized. What wasn't canonized became "unreliable". My approach to all sacred texts is to read it and ask myself how it feels and if Spirit wants to add anything to what I read. On one hand we have Paul's teaching. Gnostic Christianity is another approach. Both are valid experiences. If this topic opens back up, here or elsewhere, I will contribute and listen.

By "paths being lit up", do you mean paths of the Three of Life or some other paths? I love the story of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Horus. I am a Mason and we have a Jewish version of this Egyptian story in our ritual work. The three ruffians of the Masonic ritual are Set or Sutekh. And they represent the penalties just as Osiris was killed in various ways: suffocation, being cut up and scattered, etc. That is downright fun to think about. I am interested in the journey through the underworld. I see it as an inevitable passage. My main interest in John Dee's work has been the Ring of King Solomon.

SonOfTheGods, I looked The Headless One up and it was a good read. Tell us what it is like to perform the ritual and what results you felt, please. And, in your opinion, does this Headless One have anything to do with the Holy Guardian Angel? I am not a serious student of these rituals and am shooting from the hip here.

It is likely that the term, Holy Guardian Angel, has nothing to do with my vision, yet, for the life of me, I cannot think of what else it could have been. Years ago, I studied the Abramelin ritual with a friend. The conclusion we came to was that this is but one way to wake up this vision of the Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley used an Egyptian ritual call The Bornless One to attain "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". [see http://www.jwmt.org/v1n7/bornless.html] “The Heart Girt with a Serpent is My Name" is one of the lines of the ritual. “The Heart Girt with a Serpent" (Liber LXV) is also the name of a poem which Crowley wrote, and I have pondered the first chapter quite a number of times. It fascinates me for some reason. I see the heart with a snake wrapped around it. The heart does hot resist but yields, and in this act of surrender comes its true power for the snake is absorbed into the heart, they become one. Can you imagine what it feels like to have your heart held in a death grip, the constricted sensation, the heaviness of the snake's added weight. I recently reread parts of The Law of One. In session 49, it says: I conclude from this session that where you feel uncomfortable is where the work is going on, it is where the upward path is blocked, or "constricted" by the coils of the serpent. The heart girt with a serpent is in need of clearing of obstruction. How is this achieved? Surrender, yield to yielding as P'taah says it. However you choose attempting to awaken this Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel, an open heart seem like a good recommendation. I will suggest a prayer as an aid: As you say, "It is yours," you may feel as if your offering is actually leaving your body. After the heart is clear, the focus of inner work shifts upward and the sensation of a serpent binding the heart fades away. You are one more step closer to your potential as a god. This Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel most likely occurs many times on different levels of consciousness as the Snake advances upward. "The Beetle appears." I would guess that it is the dung beetle who sits in Ra's boat as it traverses the underworld toward the Golden Dawn, where Lord Adonai is waiting for you.

I will tell you what I think. I experienced this Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel a number of years ago. Once open, the vision expands from there and is unstoppable. Two years prior to the vision, I opened a portal into "Heaven" where I could see beings of Light, and lots of golden light. This vision, once open, stayed open 24/7. I was also meditating on a point high above my head called the Golden Ring by some. Using Golden Dawn terminology, this was the Sphere of Sensation I was playing with. The Auric Filed contains portals into other worlds which you can awaken. This I was doing. I learned ThetaHealing and did hundreds of healings on myself and others during this time period. I woke up the ability to see past lives for my self and others and used this to aid in healings. One thing ThetaHealing taught me was how to cast out "entities", those unwanted negative spirits who "possess" you. I got this crazy idea to cast my own spirit out of my body as if I was an unwanted entity. I did so and was pulled out of my body by two angels and carried up into the Light, creating a near death experience. In this Light I met many beings of Light, the ones I'd been looking at in my vision of "heaven". "Father" walked up me and placed a chain over my head with a flame hanging from it. The flame rested over my heart. I found myself back in my body but the chain with its flame was still there. Soon afterward, I was directed to studying Karezza, the sexual practice of having sex in stillness. Lots of hugging, not so much action. We did this all that summer. Orgasms were felt moving between us from chest to chest, bypassing the groin. I played with the flame on the chain by pulling it into my chest during sex so that it rested in my heart center. This increased the "heart orgasm" experience. I found that if I placed the flame inside my lover's heart that my own heart energy increased even more than when placing the flame inside my heart. This was, again, playing with Golden Dawn's Sphere of Sensation. That summer, I also began spinning the golden ring high above my head in all directions at once. This is impossible, but when your mind manages to do this, it creates a great deal of energy in this portal above your head. I began conversing with the beings of Light in my open vision of Heaven that summer; it was an awesome experience to talk face to face with God. I also played with another portal of the Sphere of Sensation that summer which I called the Mirror. It is a door just in front of you that you can enter which is filled with Nothingness, or endless creative potential. I was told to take all this love I was generating from the extended hugging and cast it up into the Light while in the Mirror. This love which I surrendered always returned magnified. That is what I was doing that summer and fall before the vision of the Holy Guardian Angel appeared. One morning while in meditation as I was looking at a vision of "heaven", "heaven" disappeared and a being of Light appeared in a dimension just beyond "heaven". I knew beyond any doubt that I was looking at me. This was my Holy Guardian Angel or Higher Self or whatever you want to call it. This vision stayed open 24/7 just as my vision of "heaven" had. Shortly afterward, "heaven" disappeared, never to return. A year later, I was studying the Gnostic Mass by Crowley. I went into a trance and experienced the Mass on the astral plane. I recall the moment I received the drink and cake from the High Priestess; something shifted inside me. Shortly afterward, I invited the Holy Guardian Angel to descend and enter my body. It did and my inner world ignited with fire, lasting a couple of months. Now, I have left off a great deal of what happened. But this is the gist of it as relating to this Higher Self or Holy Guardian Angel. What caused this? There was intense work on the heart. Three was intense work on the portals in the Sphere of Sensation. I had to have a very open third eye. There were many mystical experience which built upon each previous one. This was not a casual effort. You got that right, whoever posted that comment. I was working on this constantly for years. You can see that opening the heart was part of it; opening the inner eye was also important. I was opening portals. Especially the one above my head was important, I think. What really caused the Holy Guardian Angel to appear? It was a mystical experience and I'm not sure just what brought it about. It just happened. Everyone is going to experience this differently. Everyone's path is unique. Love in the heart, an open inner eye, patience, and following your inner guidance system with faith and vigilance are the key points; however they materialize is not as important as the inner shift you go through.

In Taoist Alchemy, do you find another energy, cosmic or whatever you want to call it, merging with you to help you evolve at times? Is progress in alchemy all your own doing or do you get help? Is there really a Master who comes home as the Golden Flower describes it? You could say that the Master is the Self, but then who is the Self?

Excellent! When I was running the MCO I also always ran it backward part of the time. Up the spine was always on the skin-side and down the spine was always on the inner side, just as you describe it. This must be the natural order of things. Thank you for sharing.